So I did promise to show you a photo of the afghan I made for my Great Aunts 90th birthday didn’t I.  I had decided to make her a lapghan made up from 12 inch squares as I have never made a blanket with squares that big before (the CAL doesn’t count as it’s not finished yet!).

I knew I wanted a pattern with a fairly repetitive rhythm that I could work on in an evening whilst watching TV but something that wasn’t compromised on the prettiness. I have loads of crochet books so I had a look on my shelf and picked a block from The Granny Square Book by Margaret Hubert called ‘Butterfly Garden’.  My husband brought me this book a couple of Christmas’s ago and I have made a few of the blocks in it for different things, its a great book.  

I picked five colours to make my blanket and for the yarn I decided on Stylecraft Special Aran which is a 100% acrylic yarn in 100g balls.  The colours I chose are Cream, Camel, Gold, Copper and Dark Brown and  I must confess I adapted the pattern slightly to suit myself just because I wanted to get in my colour repeats!   

I love Stylecraft yarn, it’s definitely one of my go to yarns. The Aran in particular is chunky, smooth  and squidgy.  Its lovely to work with as it comes in a wide range of colours, it’s not too expensive when making a large blanket in multiple colours and it doesn’t split when you are working with it. I used about 10 or so balls in total to make my 3 x 4 square blanket only because of the multiple colours and I used some colours more than others (a lot more brown for joining and the edging).

The blanket seemed so much bigger in real life than I’d imagined it would be and it certainly kept me nice and cosy in an evening as I was hooking it up – I quite missed it when it was gone. 

I joined my squares using the flat braid join and the edging was from another book from my shelf called Around the Corner Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman (another fab Christmas gift from my husband from a different year – he knows what I like bless him!).

And so this is my final tah dah moment! The British weather was so obliging when I did my photo shoot providing me with a brilliant blue sky which made the blanket colours really pop.  

And my Aunt was thrilled with the blanket which is all I could have asked for!